Milestones:SPICE Circuit Simulation Program, 1970

SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) was created at UC Berkeley as a class project in 1969-1970. It evolved to become the worldwide standard integrated circuit simulator. SPICE has been used to train many students in the intricacies of circuit simulation. SPICE and its descendants have become essential tools employed by virtually all integrated circuit designers.

The plaque may be viewed just inside the main entrance to Cory Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA. Cory Hall is the Electrical Engineering building at UC Berkeley and is the building where all three versions of SPICE were developed.

SPICE was the first computer program for simulating the performance of integrated circuits that was readily available to undergraduate students for study of integrated circuit design. Hundreds of graduates from UC Berkeley and other universities became the backbone of the engineering workforce that moved the US to microelectronics to industry leadership in the 1970s. Graduates of Berkeley became leaders of today's largest firms delivering design automation capabilities for advanced microelectronics.

SPICE was much more than a simple program for instructional use. It was the first to incorporate sparse matrix analysis to permit economic simulation of large circuits, adjoint analysis for sensitivity to component variations and noise, built-in device models for "first-cut" design, and a simple user interface that evolved through the transitions from punched cards to dumb terminals to sophisticated workstations. For the first time, the developers of SPICE made source code widely available, enabling others to contribute more sophisticated device models and additional analysis capabilities. These factors contributed to its dominant status in the subsequent development of both open-source and proprietary circuit simulation software.

[4] L. W. Nagel and D. O. Pederson, “Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis
(SPICE),” presented at 16th Midwest Symp. on Circuit Theory, Ontario, Canada, April 12, 1973
and available as Memorandum No ERL-M382, Electronics Research Laboratory, College of
Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA,
www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1973/ERL-382.pdf

[5] L. W. Nagel, “SPICE2: A Computer Program to Simulate Semiconductor Circuits,” PhD
dissertation, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA, May 9 1975 and available as Memorandum No
ERL-M520, Electronics Research Laboratory, College of Engineering, University of California,
Berkeley, CA, www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1975/ERL-520.pdf.